The New “Gold Standard” of Virtual Desktop Performance

What does “great performance” mean to you? Those of us in the IT world (and particularly in the world of VDI) instantly think of the speed and response time of our applications. In this busy, pedal-as-fast-as-you-can environment we live in, it seems like nothing ever happens fast enough. Whether you think of performance the same way we do or your idea of a “great performance’ happens in a theater on Broadway, we all have a “gold standard” against which we are gauging “greatness”.

When it comes to VDI, we’ve always looked to the speed of physical PCs or high-end workstations as the baseline against which we measure the performance of virtual desktops and apps. Looking back, the claims that were made – and still are being made – about a “great user experience” with legacy VDI must have been true only under the most perfect of circumstances, because most legacy VDI customers cannot substantiate that claim. It’s widely acknowledged that the user experience for on-premises VDI is decidedly not “great” – not when measured against the physical PC. If I have to go get a cup of coffee while I try to login to my computer, or wait 20 seconds for my app to load, that is annoying to me and a productivity hit for the business. If you work on an IT team and you’ve had any exposure to legacy VDI, it’s likely you’ve heard these kinds of complaints over and over. If these performance problems happen in a healthcare setting (and it does happen every day), that can affect patient care; it’s just not acceptable.

The New Gold Standard of Performance

Now what if I told you that physical PCs and high-end, liquid cooled GPU workstations are no longer used to calibrate the baseline of computing performance? There’s something better. No, I have not taken leave of my senses! In a previous blog, our CEO, Amitabh Sinha, walked through the “New Math of VDI Performance.” In the early days of Workspot, we compared our performance to legacy VDI solutions. It’s true that it’s way better, but that’s not saying much. Now we don’t bother to compare the performance of our virtual desktop and GPU workstation solutions to legacy VDI anymore; it’s just obvious that the performance is superior because of our cloud-native architecture. What matters to customers is how well we perform versus their physical PCs and workstations. That’s where the rubber meets the road. When you combine Workspot’s cloud-native architecture with Microsoft Azure, we get a new gold standard for end user computing performance: Workspot Desktop Cloud and Workstation Cloud. It’s the new measure of greatness in the world of virtual desktops because we are delivering better-than-PC and better-than-workstation performance! In his blog, Amitabh presents the numbers behind how we achieve this. The key is that now, you put your PCs in the cloud in any of the 50+ Azure regions in the world so they are close to your users. Workspot’s cloud-native VDI control plane architecture is what makes the superior performance, scalability and security benefits of cloud PCs possible. No one can do what we do. This all sounds really good, but what does it look like in the real world Is it theory or reality? Let’s take a look at a few customer scenarios and comments to illustrate the answer.

Performance in the Real World

A major mechanical, engineering and plumbing (MEP) building systems expert faced investing more in on-premises IT infrastructure to maintain massive amounts of project data across multiple locations or . . . finding a better way. Their prior experience with a traditional VDI solution was unsuccessful for several reasons, including performance that lagged what was needed – a complete show stopper. The thought leader and champion behind the implementation said: “Workspot introduced a new approach and we had a working solution in a week.” The IT team conducted intensive engineer acceptance and testing of Workstation Cloud, and ultimately reported 12ms response times from their CAD and BIM apps; those were some happy engineers! This kind of performance is unmatched! Now the firm can hire the right talent for every project, regardless of geographical location, and there’s no need to open expensive branch offices since engineers can work from home or the project site.

Mead & Hunt, one of the largest architecture and engineering firms in the U.S., needed to make changes to their IT infrastructure to support the corporate growth plan. Having tried traditional VDI and found the performance unacceptable to the point of inhibiting productivity, CIO Andy Knauf was understandably skeptical when Workspot proposed a new approach. After agreeing to a pilot, GPU-accelerated Windows 10 desktops in Workstation Cloud were running and available to the Mead & Hunt engineers in just a few days, and their CAD engineers found the performance to be as good or better than their physical workstations. Andy says, “We’re seeing ridiculous speed with Workspot on Azure.” More happy CAD engineers! Now the firm can pursue projects anywhere in the world to achieve their growth objectives.

What’s so exciting about the experience of these customers is that their users are the most demanding when it comes to performance. CAD engineers and BIM professionals cannot tolerate slow app response times and neither should any virtual desktop user.

The Proof is in the Performance

My favorite quote this week from a new customer is from a technical user who was more than a little surprised at Workspot’s stellar performance: “I used my virtual desktop as my primary computer all day yesterday and the performance was great! I experienced no lag, no stutters at all.”

The claims of legacy VDI “greatness” will continue, but ultimately the proof is in the performance. That’s why a hallmark of our industry-first Customer Success Program is to prove to you up front that our solution delivers the value you’re looking for, with the performance you need – and it can happen in as little as a day! Gone are the days of buying expensive licenses and servers, waiting months for everything to be implemented, and hoping that everything will work and meet your needs. Gone are the days of customers assuming all of that risk! No other vendor can offer you the combination of simplicity, enterprise-readiness, performance, and turnkey service. That’s how we roll, and we can’t wait to show you how Workspot Desktop Cloud, App Cloud and Workstation Cloud on Microsoft Azure can take business agility to the next level for your organization. Access our resources page to watch our video and get to know Workspot better, and if you’re ready, you can schedule a live demo!

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Resource

The GET Framework for VDI Solutions provides IT leaders with a structured approach to identifying requirements and evaluating the capabilities of different approaches to VDI. and cloud desktops. Read the Executive Brief now.

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What’s the Workspot difference? It goes way beyond innovative technology. We reinvented virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) as well as the business model. We’re absolutely committed to your success.